Same time, same teams, different place. LSU defeated UCLA in the Sweet 16 of the 2024 Women’s NCAA Tournament. On Sunday, they’ll meet again in the Big Dance, this time with a trip to the Final Four on the line. Ahead of the highly-anticipated showdown, the two sides exchanged words.
Ironically, the boldest comment came from UCLA forward Janiah Barker, who didn’t even play for the Bruins last year. She transferred from Texas A&M, though, and still has bad memories from playing the Tigers during her time in the SEC.
“I don’t like LSU if I’m being honest,” Barker told Brenna Greene on Saturday. “I want to beat them as bad as they [her UCLA teammates] do, but probably a little more because Texas A&M and LSU was a rivalry. It’s like a rivalry game for me just reset.”
While Barker’s teammates didn’t go that far, it was clear the loss to the Tigers is still with them.
“I think we all remember a lot about the game, the intensity, how physical it was, what a great matchup it was,” Kiki Rice said during an off-day press conference. “Obviously, we didn’t come out on top last year, but I think just everything that we learned from their style of play and how we needed to come out and how we needed to be more prepared.
“A lot of our learning from last year were from that game, and I think how we’ve attacked this season as an entirety and as a whole has really prepared us really well for tomorrow’s matchup. But we’ll be prepared. We’ll be ready. We have great team, great staff that will prepare us, so I’m excited.”
While the Bruins were ready and willing to talk about last year’s matchup, Tigers coach Kim Mulkey was doing a Don Draper impersonation.
“So they used our loss to fuel their season?” Mulkey said during her press conference. “I don’t know that we’ve really thought about that win very much. I’m sure if that was the last game of the season for them, maybe it does fuel them. But I just remember we won. I can’t remember details.”
The Tigers won last year’s meeting by forcing the Bruins into 19 turnovers and holding Lauren Betts to 14 points and just nine field goal attempts. They had Angel Reese and were the defending national champions then, however, and were expected to win.
This time around, it’s the Bruins, the tournament’s No. 1 overall seed, who seem to have the upper hand. Betts is much improved and is coming off back-to-back 30-point, 10-rebound performances. Will the Tigers be able to slow her down again without Reese? That figures to be the key factor on Sunday.
Betts, for her part, will be ready.
“We’ve played them before. They’re a really physical, really aggressive team,” Betts said. “Obviously matching up against [Aneesah] Morrow, she’s going to be super physical and want to get every single rebound. So just making sure that we come out with that mentality that we’re just not going to let that happen, and we’re going to attack from the very beginning.”